THE CAMPAIGN OF 1796 IN GERMANY The wonder of Europe now transferred itself from the drama of the French Revolution to the equally absorbing drama of a great war on the Rhine. France's policy was no longer defensive. She aimed at invading and "revolutionizing" the monarchies and principalities of old Europe, and to this end the campaign of 1796 was to be the great and conclusive effort. The "liberation of the oppressed" had its part in the decision, and the glory of freeing the serf easily merged itself in the glory of defeating the serf's masters. But a still more pressing motive for carrying the war into the enemy's country was the fact that France and the lands she had overrun could no longer subsist her armies. The Directory frankly told its generals, when they complained that their men were starving and ragged, that they would find plenty of sub sistence beyond the Rhine. On her part, Austria, no longer fet tered by allied contingents nor by the expenses of a far distant campaign, could put forth more strength than on former cam paigns, and as war came nearer home and the citizen saw himself threatened by "revolutionizing" and devastating armies, he ceased to hamper or to swindle the troops. Thus the duel took place on the grandest scale then known in the history of European armies. Apart from the secondary theatre of Italy, the area embraced in the struggle was a vast triangle extending from Dusseldorf to Basle and thence to Ratisbon, and Carnot sketched the outlines in accordance with the scale of the picture. He imagined nothing less than the union of the armies of the Rhine and the Riviera before the walls of Vienna.
The scheme took shape only gradu ally. The first advance was made partly in search of food, partly to disengage the Palatinate, which Clerfayt had conquered in 1795. "If you have reason to believe that you would find some supplies on the Lahn, hasten thither with the greater part of your forces," wrote the Directory to Jourdan (Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, 76,00o) on March 29. He was to move at once, before the Austrians could concentrate, pass the Rhine at Dusseldorf and do his utmost to break them up completely. A fortnight later Moreau (Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle, 78, 000) was ordered to take advantage of Jourdan's move, which would draw off the Austrian f orces, to enter the Breisgau and Suabia. "You will attack Austria at home, and capture her magazines. You will enter a new country, the resources of which, properly handled, should suffice for the needs of the Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle." Jourdan, therefore, was to take upon him self the destruction of the enemy, Moreau the invasion of south Germany. Jourdan crossed at Dusseldorf and reached the Lahn, but the Austrians, now commanded by the archduke Charles, concentrated against him very swiftly and he had to retire over the river. Still he enabled Moreau to cross at Strasbourg without much difficulty. On hearing of Moreau's progress, the archduke returned to the Neckar country with 20,000 men, leaving War tensleben with 36,00o to observe Jourdan. In later years he ad mitted himself that his own force, weakened by the usual numer ous detachments, was far too small to deal with Moreau, who, he probably thought, would retire after a few manoeuvres.
But Carnot had indicated a decisive battle as the object. Jourdan was instructed, if the archduke turned on Moreau, to follow him up and bring him to action. Moreau, too, was not retreating but advancing. The two armies, Moreau's and the archduke's, met in a straggling and indecisive battle at Malsch on July 9, and soon afterwards Charles learned that Jourdan had recrossed the Rhine and was driving Wartens leben before him. He thereupon retired both armies from the Rhine valley into the interior, hoping that at least the French would detach large forces to besiege the river fortresses. Dis appointed of this, he determined, in his own words : "to retire both armies step by step without committing himself to a battle, and to seize the first opportunity to unite them so as to throw him self with superior or at least equal strength on one of the two hostile enemies." This is the ever-recurring idea of "interior lines." It was not new, for C. Claudius Nero in the Metaurus campaign (207 B.c.) had given the earliest example, and Frederick the Great had used similar means in similar circumstances, as had Souham at Tourcoing and even Dampierre at Valenciennes. Nor was it differentiated, as were Bonaparte's operations in this same year, by the deliberate use of a small containing force at one point to obtain relative superiority at another. The point to be observed is not the expedient, which was dictated by the cir cumstances, but the courage of the young general, who, unlike Wartensleben and the rest of his generals, unlike, too, Moreau and Jourdan themselves, surmounted difficulties instead of la menting them. On the other side, Carnot, of course, foresaw this possibility. He warned the generals not to allow the enemy to "use his forces sometimes against one, sometimes against the other, as he did in the last campaign," and ordered them to go forward respectively into Franconia and into the country of the upper Neckar, with a view to seeking out and defeating the enemy's army. But the plan of operations soon grew bolder. Jourdan was informed on July 21 that he was not to hesitate to advance to Ratisbon and even to Passau if the disorganization of the enemy admitted it, but in these contingencies he was to de tach a force into Bohemia to levy contributions. "We presume that the enemy is too weak to offer a successful resistance and will have united his forces on the Danube ; we hope that our two armies will act in unison to rout him completely. Each is, in any case, strong enough to attack by itself, and nothing is so pernicious as slowness in war." Evidently the fear that the two Austrian armies would unite against one of their assailants had now given place to something like disdain.
This was due in all probability to the rapidity with which Moreau was driving the archduke before him. Wartensleben was similarly falling back before Jourdan. Hitherto an independent leader, he resented the loss of his freedom of action, and beside lamenta tions opposed a dull passive resistance to all but the most formal orders of the prince. Many weeks passed before this was over come sufficiently for his leader even to arrange for the contem plated combination, and in these weeks the archduke was being driven back day by day, and the German principalities were fall ing away one by one as the French advanced and preached the revolutionary formula. But their operating armies had seriously diminished in numbers, Jourdan disposing of not more than 45,00o and Moreau of about 50,00o. The archduke had now, ow ing to the arrival of a few detachments from the Black Forest and elsewhere, about 34,00o men, Wartensleben almost exactly the same, and the former suddenly turned and fought a long, severe and straggling battle above Neresheim (Aug. 11). This did not, however, give him much respite, and on the 12th he began to retire over the Danube. At this date Wartensleben was about Amberg, almost as far away from the other army as he had been on the Rhine, owing to the necessity of retreating round instead of through the neutral principality of Bayreuth (Prussian). Hitherto Charles had intended to unite his armies on the Danube against Moreau. His later choice of Jourdan's army as the ob jective of his combination grew out of circumstances and in particular out of the brilliant reconnaissance work of one of Wartensleben's cavalry brigadiers, Nauendorff. This general's reports induced the archduke, on the 12th, to begin a concentra tion of his own army towards Ingolstadt; the 13th showed that the main columns of the French were swinging away to the east against Wartensleben's front and inner flanks, and on the 14th he boldly suggested the idea that decided the campaign, "If your Royal Highness will or can advance 12,000 men against Jourdan's rear, he is lost." When this message arrived at headquarters the archduke had already issued orders to the same effect. Latour, with 30,00o men, was to keep Moreau occupied—another ex pedient of the moment, due to the very close pressure of Moreau's advance, and the failure of the attempt to put him out of action at Neresheim. The small remainder of the army, with a few de tachments gathered en route, in all about 27,00o men, began to recross the Danube on the 14th, and slowly advanced north on a broad front, its leader being now sure that at some point on his line he would encounter the French, whether they were heading for Ratisbon or Amberg. Meanwhile, the Directory, still acting on the theory of the archduke's weakness, had ordered Moreau to combine the operations with those of Bonaparte in Italian Tirol, and Jourdan to turn both flanks of his immediate opponent, and thus to prevent his joining the archduke, as well as his retreat into Bohemia. And, curiously enough, it was this latter, and not Moreau's move, which suggested to the archduke that his chance had come. The chance was, in fact, one dear to the 18th century general, catching his opponent in the act of executing a ma noeuvre.
The decisive events of the cam paign can be described very briefly, the ideas that directed them having been made clear. The long thin line of the archduke wrapped itself around Jourdan's right flank near Amberg, while Wartensleben f ought him in front. The battle (Aug. 24) was a series of engagements between the various columns that met; it was a repetition in fact of Fleurus, without the intensity of fighting spirit that redeems that battle from dullness. Success followed, not upon bravery or even tactics, but upon the pre existing strategical conditions. At the end of the day the French retired, and the next morning the archduke began another wide extension to his left, hoping to head them off. This consumed several days. In the course of it Jourdan attempted to take ad vantage of his opponent's dissemination to regain the direct road to Wiirzburg, but the attempt was defeated by an almost for tuitous combination of forces at the threatened point. More effective, indeed, than this indirect pursuit was the very active hostility of the peasantry, who had suffered in Jourdan's advance and retaliated so effectually during his retreat that the army be came thoroughly demoralized, both by want of food and by the strain of incessant sniping. Defeated again at Wiirzburg (q.v.) on Sept. 3, Jourdan confined his retreat to the Lahn, and finally withdrew the shattered army over the Rhine. In the last engage ment on the Lahn the young and brilliant Marceau was mortally wounded. Far away in Bavaria, Moreau had meantime been driving Latour from one line of resistance to another. On re ceiving the news of Jourdan's reverses, however, he made a rapid and successful retreat to Strasbourg, evading the prince's army, which had ascended the Rhine valley to head him nff in the nirk of time.
This celebrated campaign raised the reputation of the arch duke Charles to the highest point, and deservedly, for he wrested victory from the most desperate circumstances by the skilful and resolute employment of his one advantage. But this was only possible because Moreau and Jourdan were content to accept strategical failure without seeking to redress the balance by hard fighting. The great question of this campaign is, why did Moreau and Jourdan fail against inferior numbers, when in Italy Bona parte with a similar army against a similar opponent won victory after victory against equal and superior forces? So far as it is possible to summarize the answer in one phrase, it lies in the fact that though the Directory meant this campaign to be the final word in the Revolutionary War, for the nation at large this final word had been said at Fleurus. In default of a cause, however, soldiers will fight for a man, and this brings us by a natural sequence of ideas to the war in Italy.
